drdanger

As far as needing a foundation to understand complicated concepts that's true of anything. You can't be a carpenter until you have a foundation of skills that the aggregate of allow you to use tools to build houses. You can't be a pastor until you have studied the bible extensively. You can't understand calculus without a background of other mathematics. I don't think that anyone should expect to be a master of anything without taking the time to learn the skills/knowledge that make of mastery of that field. I am in no ways a master of understanding evolution. I'd still call my self a layman really and I understand a great deal more than the majority of people. I'm not even dead set on evolution being valid. I've just examined the possibilities, looked at the evidence in favor of other explanations and decided that evolution is logically the most probable. This is the kind of convincing that I think should be focused on. I'm not looking to give people the equivalent of a doctorate in evolutionary biology in five minutes--that would be impossible. Instead, I'm looking to show them that evolution is the most likely, rational, provable explanation that we have. To do that just requires a basic explanation of what evolution is, some important pieces of evidence that support it, and refuting some examples of counter arguments made against evolution. Like Phi for All said "the problem is the lack of time before the average person stops listening to all the proof you have." If I wanted a mountain of evidence I'd write a book that very few people would read. Instead, i just want to make a pamphlet that someone could work through in a few minutes.

@ marnixR: Wow, evowiki looks like a great resource. I'll have to read through it when I have time. @npts2020: Well, seeing as how I'm a U.S. citizen, I'd say that he had a pretty big influence on my cognizance. I think that the zeitgeist/ken/consciousness of an era can be looked at as an onion of influences. Greek-->Roman-->English-->U.S. if you add in about a million steps along the way we get a good picture of influences on a communities thought. So yes, I am related to Thomas Paine. @mokele: I've been trying to load talkorigins for days now and its been down which is really strange since it is still the first result in a google search. Anyone have any specific proof/line or reasoning/influence/? that they found particularly convincing to them? I mean, I didn't really need to be convinced of evolution because we learned about it in 6th grade. Though I did grow up in an active christian household so I was confused while I was growing up. I think that it was learning about the work of Gregor Mendel back in 7th grade or so that convinced me of the validity of evolution. I remember having this revelatory feeling when words were put on the ideas of why I look like my parents and why they look like their parents and why some traits are recessive, etc. It was a magical moment. Any other conversion stories?

Does anyone have any information from studies on the line between species? Clearly we can say Elephants and Humans are different species, for one because they are in no way able to breed, but there are other factors as well. I personally don't know too much about the subject, and it would be nice to know.

I just read a survey that was... well i wouldn't say shocking, but disappointing at least. According to the survey only about 47% of Americans believe in Evolution, which is pretty close to the 44% who believe in ghosts (though I'm guessing the overlap isn't too dramatic...) but that is vastly overshadowed by the 80% who believe in the existence of God. Link: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/More-Americans-Believe-Devil-Hell/story.aspx?guid={9FF6758C-00C0-4673-81B9-6D506085F974} I was thinking that since many Christian denominations take the time to be evangelize, and since acceptance of Scientific fact and logic is so core to public policy and social wellbeing, why shouldn't those of us who believe in evolution try to "evangelize" as well? With that in mind, I want to collect, summarize, and synthesize all the data that I can find on evolution and all the arguments that Creationists use and try to make it fit on a flyer that can easily be printed and handed out. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a debate with a Christian who brought up some argument against evolution, or some passage in the bible that "conclusively" proves the existence of god, which, while I was sure was false, I didn't have the data to argue on the same grounds. I want to make this flyer in order to give everyone who wants to defend evolution the tools they need to do so, and hopefully to gain some converts. I want to lay it out just like any other flyer you might pick up at a community center or have handed to you in a city square: 8.5 by 11 inch printer sized paper folded three ways with info on each side. This is where all of you come in! I only know so much about evolution, and my ability to research is limited by time. If anyone here has data which they feel deserves to be included in this pamphlet please summarize it, post it here, and cite your source. Citations are necessary! I don't want to put forth an argument with the same reasoning a creationist would have: "You should believe me just because I told you so." I hope to get a lot of feedback, and I'll definitely keep updating this thread with project progress. And of course I'll post the finished result with printing and folding instructions so hopefully you all can distribute them.

Thank you for all the responses. I'm not sure if I have the capability of conducting such an experiment at this point in time but maybe later in life I can. My main concern was just that there is some well known law that would make my experiment impossible that I didn't know about but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm intrigued to know about all this evidence that you all have mentioned in favor of evolution. In my own studies I've found enough to convince me, but I wouldn't say that it has been a mountain of conclusive evidence. Just enough for me to accept it as the most likely explanation that we have. I'll have to keep researching for more evidence.

I don't know much about insects. Is there such a thing as an aquatic insect? From what I know, there are already quite a few experiments that have been done on fruit flies to prove evolution but they don't seem to have been received by the public very warmly. I feel like if people were shown that mammals are subject to evolution than it would hit a lot closer to home and people would be more willing to believe that it applies to them as well than if the same experiment were performed with insects. Besides, with mice you would be more capable of artificial selection. You could remove mice which aren't aquatically adapted and encourage breeding between those mice which are.

Because breeding doesn't produce new species to my knowledge. Regardless of what type of dog you have they are still Canis lupus familiaris and a chihuahua could still conceivably breed with a St Bernard, if not physically than through artificial insemination. I want to see if an entirely new species could be created, one which wouldn't be reproductively compatible with other mice.

wouldn't the experiment be worth conducting anyways? If time is the only factor it's not as though it would require a whole lot of resources, and wouldn't it be worth while if it were able to provide the conclusive evidence that evolution lacks? When people speak against evolution they often cite the lack of fossil evidence but with if this experiment proved productive then it would absolve then need for fossil evidence. Wouldn't proof of evolution be worth devoting a bit of lab space to?

I've been reading about evolution recently and I was curious about a potential experiment that might evidence the idea of speciation, that is, that new species evolve from old ones as a result of changing environmental conditions. I've seen evidence that shows that evolution can occur quite rapidly in many instances, for example an experiment that was conducted by the Grants in the Galapagos showed that average beak size in a finch population shifted dramatically over a short period as a result of a drought. With that in mind I was curious as to why an experiment couldn't be conducted to attempt to create a new species. What I have in mind is to have a group of mice and put them in a condition of competition, that is, introduce some form of predation, and control the food source so that population growth is checked. In this condition, control the food source so that the mice have to submerge them selves to get the food. At first this could be achieved by placing food pellets in a trough of water that they would have to dunk their heads into to get. Since they are competing for food some of the mice would starve, or become unfit and be more subject to predation than the other mice. This would result in natural selection favoring those mice which were best able to submerge for food. After a certain amount of generations, the food could then be placed in a puddle which would required the mice to submerge their whole bodies in to get. The natural selection would continue to favor those mice that were best able to swim. The process could then be extended to place the food deeper so the mice would have to dive to get the food and they would be in direct competition with the other mice. These harsh conditions should, by evolutionary theory, cause rapid change and natural selection would favor those mice had those characteristics best suited to swimming: less fur, longer limbs, development of webbed feet, etc. Eventually water predators could be introduced to encourage the development of faster swimming, and hypothetically as the mice became more and more specialized toward aquatic living genetic drift would make them sexually incompatible with other mice and will have become a new species. Since mice breed so rapidly, I feel as though this process could be achieved within a feasible time line, it seems at least within 100 years. Additionally the mice could be made subject to radiation to encourage DNA mutation which might also quicken the process. The significance of such an experiment would be to provide direct evidence in favor of speciation and would be substantial evidence in favor of evolution. Does anyone know any reasons why this experiment might be unachievable? The idea seems solid to me, but I am operating solely off of information gathered through my own research and do not know any knowledgable sources whom I could ask, which is why I ask here. Thanks in advance for any answers or discussion on the topic